in So That Happened

Right-Wing Painter’s Latest Awful Trump Portrait Is Getting Artfully Roasted On Twitter

2k Views

This painting is so bad it gave me both brain and eye cancer.

You may remember radical conservative artist Jon McNaughton’s last pro-Trump portrait which featured a solemn President Trump lovingly cradling a filthy, tattered American flag to his bosom while he dabbed it with a cloth.

Well he’s back with a new one, this time featuring a very patient and compassionate Trump sitting on a bench(?) and teaching a man to fish in what looks like a park(?)

McNaughton explained the tedious imagery:

“’Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’”

I imagined President Trump sitting next to a young college student. His pack is beside him and his Socialism and Justice Warrior books laid aside. He listens to Trump’s proposal and looks at the different bait he can use to catch his fish. Trump offers him a fishing pole. Each of us has the freedom to choose our own destiny.

Trump has suggested through his educational policy that people can be taught a skilled vocation. How will Trump make America great again? I believe this mantra is about giving American citizens an equal opportunity to find success. Equal opportunity is different than equal results. You can give a man a pole, it doesn’t mean he will use it.

In other words “I painted the literal interpretation of a common saying because my audience does not understand or enjoy subtlety.”

Trump as a fisherman is almost as laughable as Trump as the champion of workforce education and training. As with most things, he talks a big game and then doesn’t follow through. Trump recently told a crowd, “I think the word ‘vocational’ is a much better word than in many cases, a community college. A lot of people don’t know what a community college means or represents.”

Unfortunately, Trump’s budget proposal cut $168 million in grant funding for career and technical education programs in high school, using that money to fund private school vouchers instead. (I don’t know about you, but I don’t think private schools teach fishing.)

President Obama—who McNaughton painted as a Constitution-burning friend of terrorists—proposed more funding for vocational training and community colleges, but that was back when Republicans were pretending to care about the deficit.

Twitter was immediately on the case, roasting the new portrait to kingdom come: